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No one at the trial of Quayjuan English was trying to say that English deliberately shot and
killed his friend last year.

But was English guilty of a crime? Or was the death of David Rivers an unforeseeable accident,
as English’s attorneys argued?

A Franklin County Common Pleas jury decided yesterday that Rivers’ death was a crime, convicting
English, 18, of reckless homicide and tampering with evidence.

He will be sentenced on Dec. 19 by Judge John F. Bender. Reckless homicide is punishable by nine
months to three years in prison. In addition, he faces a mandatory three years in prison for using
a gun in the commission of a felony.

English was charged with involuntary manslaughter, reckless homicide, tampering with evidence
and improper handling of a firearm in a motor vehicle in the death of Rivers, 26. The shooting
occurred on July 5, 2011, from a car parked behind a home on Genessee Avenue.

English testified in his own defense on Monday, saying he had been seated in the car when he was
handed a single-shot shotgun. He knew nothing about guns, he said. He said he was “curious” and
described how he was fiddling with the hammer when the gun discharged.

“I didn’t know there were any bullets in the gun,” he testified. “I didn’t have my finger
nowhere near the trigger.”

To convict on the manslaughter charge, jurors would have had to find that English knowingly
mishandled a loaded firearm in a motor vehicle.

In his closing argument, Assistant Prosecutor Mark Wodarcyk noted that at least one person in
the car had warned English to keep the gun “out of my face.”

“This is not an accident,” Wodarcyk said.Defense attorney Terri Jamison called the case a
tragedy for all involved but said it was not a crime.